Richard Schickel, who grew up in Thornton and graduated from Thornwood High School, retired not quite three years ago after 33 years with the Internal Revenue Service.

Since then, he's written two books — "IRS Whistleblower" and "What to do When the IRS is After You" — and just last week popped up in a Washington Post story about Donald Trump's tax returns.

Specifically, the Post detailed why the Republican presidential candidate's returns, which in a break with election tradition he has refused to release, are unlikely to be leaked.

Among Schickel's contributions to the piece was his comment on the fact that literally thousands of IRS employees could easily access Trump's tax information.

"It would take 10 minutes," he said.

I called Schickel to ask him to expound on why no one has taken those 10 minutes to grab Trump's returns and peddle them to, say, TMZ or a Hillary Clinton-friendly Super PAC for a hefty sum. A very hefty sum, to hear Schickel tell it.

"From what I've heard from friends in Washington, they're talking about (offers of) $20 million for that tax return," Schickel, 58, said from his home in Tucson, Ariz. "But you'd end up going to jail for a very long time. This is Snowden stuff."

Edward Snowden is a former CIA employee who leaked classified National Security Agency documents to journalists in 2013 and was later granted asylum in Russia.

Though the IRS operates with a computer system that is about 50 years removed from state-of-the-art, Schickel said, eventually anyone who accessed Trump's records would be found out.

"It might take a long time, but yeah, you'd get caught," he said. "I couldn't see anyone leaking this unless they were dying of cancer or something like that."

As to why Trump wouldn't simply release his returns, Schickel — who retired from the IRS as a senior revenue officer and has since opened a tax consulting service, RMS Consulting, with other IRS retirees — had an educated guess.

By the way, it has nothing to do with the sheer volume of Trump's return, which Trump's son pegged at roughly 12,000 pages. In 2015, Trump tweeted a picture of himself signing his return with a stack of papers on the desk beside him rising higher than his head.

"But really, all you'd need to see is the first two pages. That (summary) is everything — partnerships, wages, interest, dividends…"

Getting back to the "why" of it, I have to tell you my uneducated guesses are sexier: 1. Trump's business ties with communist ne'er do wells would be revealed; 2. The self-declared billionaire would unveil a net worth that he could hold in the palm of one of his teeny, tiny hands; 3. Hair extensions deducted as a business expense.

Schickel's explanation was at once simpler and more complicated.

"Because it probably shows he didn't pay any taxes," Schickel said. "If all his income is in real estate, he's probably not going to have any income."

The complicated part involves depreciation of investment properties. Basically, if you own a property and rent it to someone else, it depreciates. If the income and depreciation cancel each other out, you show no income and thus pay no taxes.

"I can't speak to (Trump's) specific case, but it's likely he wouldn't owe any taxes," Schickel said. "I've probably seen 100 returns of real estate developers over the years, and virtually none of them owed taxes from real estate income."

It's easy to understand that people would be upset over Trump paying no income tax. It's harder to understand why that would cost him votes.

After all, anyone even considering voting for Trump likely believes his purported business skills are an asset. If Trump indeed pays no income tax, that would be a further demonstration of those skills.

"That makes sense," Schickel said. "He's taking every advantage of the tax laws — why is that a bad thing?"

Perhaps because many people don't like laws fraught with loopholes benefiting the rich at the expense of the struggling, and they are loathe to believe a rich man would legislate against his own self-interests.

"My experience is most people want to pay their fair share," Schickel said. "Shouldn't we all pay something? But it's not a Donald Trump problem. It's a tax law problem."

I like Schickel's notion that most people want to pay their fair share. I note that Trump last week bragged about his skill at using "other people's money."